Ohio UFOs: Case Closed

reply to post by TheOracle

Ohio UFOs: Case Closed

Submitted by Javier Ortega on March 20, 2010 – 10:44 AM2 Comments | 459 views
The Examiner has an update on the “UFOs over Lake Erie” story. Ohio Mutual Ufo Network’s field investigator Tom Wertman concluded that what many people were calling UFOs were just incoming jet lights from Cleveland-Hopkins International Airport.

So much media interested sprouted from the original claims made by Ohio resident Eugene Erlikh. Good thing MUFON is alive and well and doing their thing!

Full source: Examiner

Roger Marsh – The Examiner

The objects reported nightly over Lake Erie skies at Euclid, Ohio, are incoming jet traffic from Cleveland-Hopkins International Airport, according to Ohio Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) Field Investigator Tom Wertman.
Wertman was reached by telephone late Thursday for a final disposition on the case.
Euclid, OH, resident Eugene Erlikh, 20, originally reported unusual objects out over Lake Erie that were appearing in the same spot night after night. The story was picked up by Fox News, Cleveland; and also by MSNBC.

The network stories brought the case to the attention of Ohio MUFON and Wertman was assigned to move to the site and have a look for himself.

Wertman, like many other ufologists who called or wrote to the UFO Examiner on this case were suspicious of the case from the beginning. The suspicion, they say, is when a sighting repeats itself in the same spot over many nights. Ufologists seem to agree that sightings like this generally have a natural or manmade ending.

Wertman specifically tracked lights from the same area where Erlikh says he was seeing lights. The two even spoke on the telephone, with Wertman outside and nearby. Erlikh was talking on the telephone from inside his high rise apartment.

“I was with him on the phone the other night,” Wertman said, “and he described the exact same lights that we were both looking at. As each object came out, we matched the same time frames. He even went back at the end of the night and reviewed the three major sightings of the night. And all three were a match. The only difference was our watches, but the time frames were the same.”

After Wertman was sure that the lights he was seeing were the same that Erlikh was seeing, his investigation began.
Wertman began comparing the movement of the lights to incoming air traffic at Cleveland-Hopkins International Airport. In addition, Wertman was using a computer to track incoming flights in real time.

On one of those evenings, Wertman and Erlikh had agreed on the three objects.
Wertman said the first object was a flight coming in from Chicago.

“Once spotted over Lake Erie, the object stayed relatively stationary for about two minutes,” Wertman said, “then a second light popped up at thumb’s length (if held at arm’s length) from the first one. The flight tracking software was then showing a second flight coming in behind the first.”

The data from the flight tracking web site was matching what Wertman was seeing.
“The first object appeared at about 8:40 p.m.. The light appeared in the northwest at 300 degrees at approximately 5 degrees above the horizon. It was a short time later – one to two minutes later – a second object appeared beside the first one. And holding my thumb at arm’s length – the two objects were a thumb’s width apart.”

“The intensity of the second light was the same as the first. The web site used to track the air traffic showed two aircraft in that same area. The first was coming from Chicago. A short time later a third light appeared. One of the first lights was moving, getting dim, and moving toward the southwest. The second light was still stationary and it gave the appearance of hovering. It appeared to be stationary or hovering for about 3 to 4 minutes.”

Cleveland airport is southwest of Erlikh’s location.

“The web site was now showing that the first plane from Chicago would land then at 8:44 p.m. The second aircraft landed at 8:49 p.m. That was evidently the two planes that were close together.”
Each object moved from the lake area to the southwest and toward the airport, matching the arrival time of the flights.

CASE CLOSURE
Wertman said he is marking this one – case closed. “It’s air traffic for Cleveland-Hopkins,” Wertman said. “The flights take a swing out over the lake where they can, at times, appear to be stationary. Then they move, one by one, to the southwest and into position to land – and right on time – according to the flight data available on the web.”
Can someone mistake lights in a night sky for something anomalous? Happens all the time, according to ufologists.

Wertman said he was talking with Erlikh during one of the investigation evenings, when Erlikh shouted, “Did you see that? An F-16 just flew over my building.”

But Wertman, standing just outside Erlikh’s building, had seen what had just gone over his building at between 1,500 to 2,000 feet above the building. “I corrected him and told him it was a small business jet. Most likely landing at nearby Burke Lakefront Airport."

news link
they did some pretty convincincing cross checking...
incoming air traffic

[edit on 20-3-2010 by reject]

[edit on 3/20/2010 by semperfortis]

reply to post by reject

Thanks reject. S&F

We are too easily fooled I guess, at least some of us are.

And the lack of high resolution pictures after a few days was a clue. By day 4 I would have been taking pictures through a telescope if I thought it was a real UFO. But at least someone did a serious investigation. And the results were somewhat predictable as the article says.

This isn't the first case where ordinary planes have been reported as UFOs and it won't be the last.

reply to post by reject


G'day reject

Thanks for posting that report.

It comes as no surprise.

Let's hope the MUFON report gets some air time & helps a little bit of credibility return to this topic.

Kind regards
Maybe...maybe not

Originally posted by Maybe...maybe not
Let's hope the MUFON report gets some air time & helps a little bit of credibility return to this topic.

I would hope the MUFON report would get some air time but I see this thread is already fading away from visibility in the ATS topic list.

The questions about UFOs are popular, apparently the answers aren't. Just look at how many stars and flags the questions thread got compared to this answer thread.

Personally, I'm here on ATS for the answers as much as the questions.

Originally posted by Arbitrageur
Personally, I'm here on ATS for the answers as much as the questions.

Yes, thats a good point - although satisfactory answers to other Ohio UFO cases like the Portage County Incident, the Coyne incident, the Trumbull County police chase and the US Coastguard East Lake incident still remain elusive (their threads don't garner much attention either).

As for this case -I've just seen that UFO hunters came up with this Lake Erie conclusion a long time ago - maybe all this media hype was just hot air.



Cheers.

reply to post by reject


I was expecting something like that because some years ago I was involved in a thread about lights over Lake Erie, and everything pointed to aeroplanes. Also, during that thread it was noticeable that the lake has a large number of flights crossing it at all times, and as in this case (as in the one on that thread) the lights looked like aeroplane lights at a relatively large distance I was expecting the same result for this case.

PS: for those that remember that thread, I am still waiting for an opportunity to film an aeroplane in the conditions I talked about in the thread, I didn't forgot about it.

reply to post by ArMaP

PS: for those that remember that thread, I am still waiting for an opportunity to film an aeroplane in the conditions I talked about in the thread, I didn't forgot about it.



Come to the Denver area. Im right in the line of flight paths for DIA and I see this "phenonomon" nightly. Its why I tend to ignore threads such as the Erie or Ohio "ufos" because what I see in those vids are the exact same thing I see nightly here.

*shrug* Oh well.

Originally posted by karl 12

Originally posted by Arbitrageur
Personally, I'm here on ATS for the answers as much as the questions.

Yes, thats a good point - although satisfactory answers to other Ohio UFO cases like the Portage County Incident, the Coyne incident, the Trumbull County police chase and the US Coastguard East Lake incident still remain elusive (their threads don't garner much attention either).

Yes, well that's what keeps this field interesting, we don't always get answers like in those good cases! The Coyne incident is probably one of the most unexplainable cases on record.

As for this case -I've just seen that UFO hunters came up with this Lake Erie conclusion a long time ago - maybe all this media hype was just hot air.

I don't understand? I watched that episode and they said the consumer grade camera images just didn't have enough information to resolve what the objects were, which isn't the same as the conclusion in the OP of this thread they were definitely airplanes. Please elaborate about what you mean by "UFO hunters came up with this Lake Erie conclusion a long time ago" because I'm not seeing it.

[edit on 21-3-2010 by Arbitrageur]

Originally posted by greeneyedleo
Its why I tend to ignore threads such as the Erie or Ohio "ufos" because what I see in those vids are the exact same thing I see nightly here.

*shrug* Oh well.

Here we go - after reading the reports and testimony involved in these Ohio UFO incidents, would you say all the objects could be satisfactorily explained as airplanes?


*Above BlueBook* - Ohio UFO Chase , Portage County April 17, 1966


The Coyne incident, Mansfield, Ohio, 1973


Trumbull County Ohio Stunning UFO Sightings Documentary


Lebanon Police chase UFO - Jan 5th, 2000


US Coastguard report - UFOs over Lake Erie.


Cheers.

reply to post by Arbitrageur


Apologies mate, I posted the wrong video -here they are here describing a very similar phenomenon over a lake in Long Island.

See 4:30

The well known flight paths across Lake Erie weren't covered in the UH clip I posted -sorry about the mix up.

Cheers.

[edit on 02/10/08 by karl 12]

Originally posted by karl 12
Here we go - after reading the reports and testimony involved in these Ohio UFO incidents, would you say all the objects could be satisfactorily explained as airplanes?

But we're not talking about ALL ufo reports from Ohio. We're talking about this particular high profile "flap" which has gotten national coverage and which CAN be satisfactorily explained as airplanes.

And because of the attention this has received, now anyone with a legitimate UFO sighting in Ohio will be even more easily dismissed.

Originally posted by DelMarvel
But we're not talking about ALL ufo reports from Ohio. We're talking about this particular high profile "flap" which has gotten national coverage and which CAN be satisfactorily explained as airplanes.

DelMarvel, thanks for the reply -I was responding to this comment made by Greeneyedleo:

Its why I tend to ignore threads such as the Erie or Ohio "ufos" because what I see in those vids are the exact same thing I see nightly here.

*shrug* Oh well.

Cheers.

Sorry, Karl, I guess I wasn't reading carefully.

This one has gotten under my skin a little. I think a big part of it is what is being said about Tom Wertman and MUFON from some quarters. The man goes down there (on his own dime I'm sure) to spend a lot of time looking into this and the thanks he gets from some people is to be called a buffoon and a government stooge.



[edit on 21-3-2010 by DelMarvel]

Originally posted by DelMarvel
Sorry, Karl, I guess I wasn't reading carefully.

This one has gotten under my skin a little. I think a big part of it is what is being said about Tom Wertman and MUFON from some quarters. The man goes down there (on his own dime I'm sure) to spend a lot of time looking into this and the thanks he gets from some people is to be called a buffoon and a government stooge.

DelMarvel -no probs mate.
I'm all for impartial debunkery and completely agree with your comments -especialy this one:

And because of the attention this has received, now anyone with a legitimate UFO sighting in Ohio will be even more easily dismissed.

As for the corporate media being all over these sightings, it's been mentioned in this thread that many people have been aware of the flight paths for quite some time - maybe they should start focusing on other credible (and unexplained) incidents from the area -or at least mention them when relating to this story.

As you may have guessed I've got a very low opinion of 'objective news programming' when it comes to the UFO subject - I don't know if you're aware of the work of Terry Hansen but he makes some very good points in this presentation.

Cheers.

[edit on 02/10/08 by karl 12]

I am contemplating making a huge collection of aircraft light identification videos. Showing how they look from different angles and different distances in different conditions...

I find it ridiculous that people are still fooled by aircraft. There needs to be some type of educational video made so people can reference it.

One word comes to mind...




DUH

Ah oh well..there is alot of ufo cases wich gets closed after getting 100% proof of that its not really something extra terr. Some are true and many are not. At least per today we now have 100% proof of that aliens have visited the earth after the new discovery of the starchild dna last phase

So no more futuristic debunking of aliens

reply to post by karl 12

Thanks for the clarification Karl!

While I like UFO Hunters, I see it as more entertainment and less serious research, and wonder if sometimes it was to the show's advantage to leave some cases unexplained so they can speculate about what it was to keep people's interest in the show. Plus it takes a lot of time, research and effort to do what the MUFON investigator did to solve this case, and maybe they didn't put that much time into it in the Ohio case.

But they did some good investigation in the 2nd episode you posted. I am particularly impressed with what appears to be original evidence like the logbook at the firestation, with no pages missing, and apparently logging all the trips the firemen took. That's the kind of good solid evidence I'd like to see more of in UFO documentaries.

Originally posted by Archirvion
At least per today we now have 100% proof of that aliens have visited the earth after the new discovery of the starchild dna last phase

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or serious but if you're serious, everyone would like to see your proof. It's off topic here, but you can post it in this other thread, where apparently nobody has seen the proof you mention, but they are all looking for it:

Aliens HAVE visited earth - Finally... tangible evidence

I believe the "no more stupid lights" website was spot on. The Kinetic SBS-1e Real Time Virtual Radar system would have debunked this one in mere minutes....

www.javiation.co.uk...

Yes, its $660. Worth every penny....

Originally posted by alexander_delta
Yes, its $660. Worth every penny....

That's an amazingly low price for such technology.

But we can't even get people to take their cameras with them, we still gets lots of UFO reports with no photos even though cameras are everywhere. So I'm afraid nobody would lug this thing around with them just in case.

However you picked the right thread to post that in, this is definitely one case where it would have helped!